Banning Chinese robots isn't regulatory capture | E2318

**Alex Wilhelm** (0:00)
Hey, everybody, welcome back to This Week in Startups. My name is Alex. It is Wednesday, which means it's time for a Venture Capital Roundtable. And today, we have four incredible investors for you. What are we talking about? Well, we're gonna dig into a ban on Chinese humanoid robots, calls to slow AI development by AI researchers. Again, startup revenues in the AI era and why Stripe may be willing to pay so much for OpenRouter. There's also NeoCloud compute deals and so much more. This Week in Startups is brought to you by Northwest Registered Agent. Get more when you start your business with Northwest. In 10 clicks and 10 minutes, you can form your company and walk away with a real business identity. Learn more at northwestregisteredagent.com/twist.
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To help us get through all of that, we have a couple of friends in one corner. I have David Weisburd of Weisburd Pierce, a long-time friend of the show. David, how are you doing?

**David Weisburd** (1:06)
It's great to be here.

**Alex Wilhelm** (1:07)
We also have Mr. Didi Das of Menlo Ventures, a firm that is back to Anthropic, OpenRouter, Merkur and others. Didi, welcome back yourself.

**Deedy Das** (1:15)
Fantastic to be here, Alex.

**Alex Wilhelm** (1:16)
We also have Lo Toney of Plexo Capital, which has invested in companies like Anthropic, Style Seat, Rap Book and Blavity. Lo, good to have you here.

**Lo Toney** (1:24)
Thanks for having me.

**Alex Wilhelm** (1:26)
Last and certainly least, we have Jason Calacanis of Launched, who is back to Uber, Thumbtack, Micro One and Athena. Jason, welcome back to your very own show.

**Jason Calacanis** (1:35)
It's great to be home. I'm on the last stop in my four city tour and six weeks on the road. I am exhausted, but it's wrapping up now in New York and I'll be back in Austin, getting ready for the school year to start, Alex. School year, you're a little before school year. I guess you have nursery school and stuff like that.

**Alex Wilhelm** (1:55)
Yeah, no. September is my first. My first child is going to be going to school twice a week, and I'm a volunteer, so I've had to get background checked and all sorts of fun things because being a parent is just one never-ending paperwork slog.

**Jason Calacanis** (2:07)
It's a lot, but it's just so rewarding. But we have a lot to get to, Alex, so let's get going here. We got great guests, we got a great docket, and there's so much to discuss. I feel like I've been out of it having not done a news program in two weeks.

**Alex Wilhelm** (2:21)
All right, well, we're going to start today with news that the Trump administration is banning Chinese robots. The FCC has decided to ban Chinese humanoid and quadruped robots by adding the hardware to its called covered list. Why? Well, the FCC says that, quote, the network's capabilities of advanced robotic systems create extensive vulnerabilities and vectors for attacks that can manipulate the data and physical operation of the advanced robotic system in question. So, Deedy, we just went three rounds discussing why banning Chinese AI models from the US would be a mistake. And so I'm curious, is the FCC's decision here on Chinese robotics different?

**Deedy Das** (2:56)
I don't really have a say in these regulatory matters to be honest with you. I do think open weight models should be everywhere. The robotics space is a little bit different from language models though because I do think the risks for language and robotics are fundamentally different.
I don't think I'm qualified to speak on what should be the regulatory landscape, but I do think we should have way more scrutiny on robotics than we do on language. The kind of damage vectors on language models are far more restrictive than what can happen with robotics.

**Alex Wilhelm** (3:29)
Okay, so Lo, I feel like this is the first time I've heard a VC tell me that they don't have the expertise to weigh in on a breaking news topic. So tell me, why is this one the time that Deedy has decided to forgo his spine and sit down?

**Lo Toney** (3:41)
Well, Deedy is really focused on some big news around probably OpenRouter, if that's a little bit of a tease for what's to come. But I think he did make the right point, which is, you know, if you think about the ability for anything to go rogue on the software side, I mean, it's fairly contained. There's real ramifications once you start thinking about what could happen in the physical world. And, you know, I think those are the types of things that need to be thought through. I'm also not the right person to think about it, but, you know, clearly you can see larger ramifications beyond just some cybersecurity threats.